The Dutch consumer broadband market grew by 0.8% or 52,800 net additions during the fourth quarter of 2012, to reach 6.59 million connections on 31 December, according to Telecompaper’s quarterly report.

For the first time, the research company added an estimate of retail revenues for the broadband market to its report, claiming those amounted to EUR 459 million for the fourth quarter of 2012.

The growth in connections was driven by a 1% growth in cable connections to 2.96 million, clearly off-setting a 0.4% quarterly decrease in DSL connections to 3.16 million. At the same time, broadband via fibre customers also grew by more than 8% to a market share of 7.3%.

Telecompaper expects the broadband connections to continue to grow during this year, although at a lower rate of 2.6% (compared with 3.1% in 2012), as more than 87% of the Dutch households have broadband, leaving less room for growth.

KPN, including its XS4ALL and Telfort brands, was still the largest broadband provider in the Netherlands with a 40.9% share of subscribers at the end of December 2012, adding 2%age points during the fourth quarter, mainly due to the acquisition of FTTH service providers Concepts ICT, Edutel, KickXL and XMS.

Excluding the acquisition, KPN’s market share would have grown by 0.2%age points during the quarter. Ziggo was number two with a market share of 26.6%, and UPC came third with 15.6% of broadband subscribers.